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Screen on laptop goes black,tho computer still on...

Hi
I have a 4 year old toshiba satellite laptop. It has been working fine, tho recently I will be surfing the net, playing a game, or typing away and the screen will go black. I press the little button (the one that gets depressed when you close the lid of the laptop) for one second and the screen comes back. everything hunky dory. this problem is intermittent. sometimes it occurs 4 or 5 times immediately in a row, sometimes its just once a week. any ideas? my warranty was up years ago.

Mods, you may want to move this to the Mobile forum so we can get a better response.

The button that you are talking about is a power saving device. It may simply be sticking-have you tried bloiwing compressed air around/through it?

However, it could be your FL inverter-that would likely be a more common malady. What model do you have? I had an old Toshiba Satellite 3000-replaced the inverter twice. It's not hard, and it's not terribly expensive-you do have to know how to get at it. The main problem with laptops is just that-how to get into them. Usually, with an inverter, the screen may appear black at first, but on closer look it is really just extremely dim (if you look hard, you can see something of the screen).

I bet it's just that button. I'd try cleaning it out with air, or if you can get into the laptop just remove it and wash it. The behavior you described is basically like a stuck key... only this key happens to turn off the screen. If you want to test it try setting "Action on lid close" to "Standby" and see if the computer starts randomly going to sleep.

That is a good point, DanceMan. At least in my experience, the dim outline has only been visible when there was not bright light-a darkened room made it apparent. Otherwise, the screen would appear blank.

I think Hoyle is likly on track that it is most likely the button in some way-too coincidental that fiddling with it brings things back.

Thanks, jimbo. One of my garage sale notebooks has a screen issue. I'll give it a try in a dark room and see if I can see anything.

On the button problem, compressed air or water may fix a dirt/mechanical obstruction. If it's poor electrical contact, an aerosol electronic contact cleaner may be an answer. And then you'll have it around for those older stereo receivers that need it for the pots and switches that get noisy and internittent with age.

Many many thanks to all the contributors above. Toshiba Satellite was driving me mad when the screen kept blacking out every 20 seconds. A quick blast of air around the little peg that's operated when closing the lid and hey presto. I swear I could see two or three little specks of grolly appear next to the peg after blowing even.